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On the highest floor of the Westchester Hotel, a chair draped in moonlight stands beside an empty window. It’s the most lived-in part of the apartment, that chair --- complete with a steaming cup of tea on a night stand nearby, in complete contradiction with the rest of the place and its pristine bed, its impeccably arranged bookshelves --- and yet the mere sight of it is steeped in so much loneliness as to be haunting all the same. Samuel’s first thought upon entering her quarters had been that its ornate neatness rendered it reminiscent of a museum; he hadn’t realised that the comparison held true because of its timeless stagnation as well. (How many years had she spent sitting at that window --- how many times had she climbed those twisting, spiral stairs --- beseeching a silent sky for answers it would never provide?)
Perhaps that is the way of the moon. The starry sky never answers him the way it answers Rose, composed as it is of far-off bits of light whose rays only barely reach the earth and hold no warmth for him, yet Samuel’s lost track of how many times he himself has turned his eyes to the moon. True, he may never have asked quite the same questions as Margaret but he’s queried it all the same. Has looked at its face and searched until he saw her in that pale luminescence. (There’s a cold kind of comfort there, and never so much as when he blinks and loses her in the darkness once more, but it is comfort nonetheless and he appreciates it.) Perhaps the moon is simply a lonely thing, sending her pale light to liven up the darkness and protect those she touches, never quite able to close the distance. Perhaps she is reaching out herself, and the coldness of her light stems only from the fact that there has been no one to ignite her warmth.
Then again, perhaps that remoteness is the glory of the moon, for her light has never burned. Instead it’s cool. Soothing. Comfortable as it gilds the sleeping world with her unearthly grace until the streets shine silver and the trees glint with starstuff. Absent the vehemence of the sun and its searing light, the moon’s beautiful, lonely light becomes delicacy instead; opposite the sun’s violent fervour, the moon is a harbour in the storm, a home to which a long-journeying traveller returns at last.
If Margaret’s gentle, too-sad, too-alone beauty leaves her feeling connected to the moon, then Samuel has only ever seen himself in the sun. For the sun is her opposite, is it not? It seers. Chars. It’s a vicious thing, as distinct from the moon as it is possible to get, and he’s always been much too similar to that dangerous star --- too loud, too energetic, too much --- with each attempt to bury that only making everything worse. (The sun can only stay subdued for so long before that forced placidity dissolves into a storm of spitting flares and popping heat.)
And passion? Just another trap.
It sounds cynical to say, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s fuel on an already raging fire, kindling and a poker to stoke the blaze. The idea of passion is viewed as admirable, but only when it is easily contained --- a controlled blaze that never gets too far out of bounds --- but there is no controlling Samuel’s because it runs and runs and runs in time to the words burning through his head: oxygen flow turning a spark into an inferno. (He knows well what it is to burn a bridge, for he’s never been able to do anything else.)
What a pair they make, the two of them: the moon, cold and distant and lonely for her isolation, and the sun, standing too destructively close and yet unable to pull away. ‘Round and ‘round and ‘round they go, an orbit of equal opposites trapped almost willingly in an interminable dance.
Maybe this is why he can’t bring himself to tell her about the hoax. (It is rare, after all, for him to stay silent, to leave things unsaid.) Maybe it’s denial --- of the fact that he’s destroying things again, hurting people in a way he’s never intended to do --- made more simple by her equally easy trust. Maybe it’s an attempt to show kindness that has gone unintentionally cruel. Either way, he’s scared, for if the moon is distant now, as her face shines fully towards the earth, then how desolate would it be for her to turn away and shutter that light, to replace her grandeur with the darkness of a new moon? (The fuse is already lit, singed by the orange-blue flames of too-high heat, and that sparking string is blazing its volatile way to a too-inevitable explosion.)
If Margaret is the moon and Samuel is the sun, then perhaps this is an eclipse. He only hopes his world will escape unscathed once the darkness ends.